Silt-laden thrills at Salisbury Hill

Thursday

Apr 17, 2008 at 5:00 AM

Resident alleges &quot;serious ecological disaster&quot;

By Scott Zoback

To hear Jamie Vander Salm describe it, Salisbury Hill, the 55-and-over luxury condo development up the hill from his house, has been single-handedly devastating the Beaver Brook Watershed and the pond behind his house with run-off silt and sediment for six years. It&#39;s repeatedly turned the water cloudy brown, he says, and led to periodic overgrowths of algae.

&quot;It&#39;s a serious ecological disaster,&quot; he told the Conservation Commission this week.

Worse, Vander Salm says, the environmental consultant charged with helping rectify the situation has been &quot;disingenuous&quot; in his efforts, and the Conservation Commission hasn&#39;t been doing all they can to prevent the damage.

The Commission and the consultant, not surprisingly, disagree.

In 2002, when the Salisbury Hill development was approved, developers Balin & Associates agreed to several terms, which included maintaining erosion and sediment controls, keeping the stormwater/retention basin clear, and having &quot;no flooding, ponding or flood-related damage caused by the project or ... run off ... onto the lands of an abutter or onto nearby or downstream properties.&quot;

Since then, though, Vander Salm says the pond behind his house has turned brown periodically due to silt-filled water; another neighboring pond and stream have also been highly turbid on several occasions. And the developer has been called before the Commission on multiple occasions to deal with &quot;silt-laden runoff.&quot; A section of the temporary run-off solution at Salisbury Hills.

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&bull; On April 15, 2004, the Worcester Conservation Commission cited the project in an enforcement order, writing that &quot;silt-laden runoff has been leaving the site.&quot; The order calls for a &quot;competent professional&quot; to assess damage that occurred after heavy rains from April 13 to 15, 2004, and detail the steps that will be taken to correct it, &quot;including the ponds on either side of Whisper Drive.&quot; Monthly reports on stabilization and erosion control are also requested.

&bull; On July 19, 2007, the Commission issued another enforcement order, writing again that &quot;silt-laden runoff has been leaving the site. Silt-laden water has been pumped from the detention pond, located on Summerland Way, across the street and toward the wetlands. Silt controls have not been maintained at the pump hose outfall.&quot; Similar actions to those asked for in 2004 are requested; additionally, &quot;the property owner shall also repair all erosion controls.&quot;

&bull; One April 2, 2008, the Commission issued a letter detailing a few existing trouble spots, requesting they be rectified.

No one denies that there has been siltation or run-off recently or historically. The problem, as Vander Salm tells it, is that despite repeated hearings, the problem hasn&#39;t been rectified. And instead of getting tougher, he says, the Conservation Commission keeps telling them to fix a problem with no real consequences.

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On the other side, environmental consultant Paul McManus of EcoTec says that the efforts being undertaken to reduce silt runoff are adequate, and that not all of the sediment is from the project.

And, on the third side, the Conservation Commission says that their efforts have been in good faith, and that it&#39;s impossible to control a construction project 100% from the beginning.

On Monday night, the Commission, McManus and Vander Salm faced off in a tense &quot;informal discussion&quot; over the siltation situation, after a recent site visit by McKone and inspector Jonathan Gervais turned up a few problems that needed to be rectified.

&quot;When I went and walked through where the discharge is &mdash; it&#39;s filled with silt,&quot; said Commission Chairman Peter McKone on Monday. &quot;Anything that goes through now, it goes right over. I found [discharge] scouring through the woods, all the way to the stream.&#39;

To Vander Salm, whose barely suppressed outrage at McManus and the Commission dominated the conversation, the meeting was just more evidence that not enough was being done.

&quot;The evidence is overwhelming that the system cannot be controlled. [And] this environmental consultant has not [determined] what is wrong,&quot; he told the Commission, accusing McManus of lying about the controls that are in place and about the source of the silt.

He questioned why the Commission had issued a letter rather than an enforcement order, saying that the Commission should be using their enforcement powers more, and accusing them of considering their fining power &quot;trifling.&quot;

&quot;Why is it a less-severe consequence than before?&quot; asks Vander Salm. &quot;The message that would be communicated to me is &lsquo;not as big a deal as last time.&#39;

&quot;The object is if something is wrong to get it fixed. We could have called this an enforcement order,&quot; said McKone, &quot;I don&#39;t know if it would have had a different result.&quot;

For his part, McManus says that he has regularly measured the turbidity numbers, and that the contractors on the project have been taking ongoing steps to maintain and monitor the amount of runoff.

&quot;This is an ongoing process, and there are ongoing measures,&quot; he told the Commission. &quot;[I] was out several times before the [April 2] letter was issued ... all these things that were done were in process already.&quot;

On Tuesday, members of the Commission, including McKone, did another site walk-through. McKone says that while he is still concerned about scouring and evidence of water flow on the hill, he didn&#39;t see much silt. Still, as a result of the hearing, the contractors are going to meet with the city engineer on a regular basis, and loom and seed will be laid down at an empty lot on the top of the hill to prevent run off. Additionally, detention ponds will be finished at the end of the summer, and water samples will be taken at the neighboring ponds. o